Yesterday, I explained the methodology I would use to rank each placekicker in each season since 1960. We're going to examine every attempt from every distance (in ten-yard increments) in every year and compare each kicker to the league average. A missed 50-yard field goal in 1965 was very common; a missed 36-yard field goal today is very rare. My method adjusts all kicks for distance and era.

Further, we're not going to just consider the ability of the kicker but also his value to the team -- missing a 50-yard field goal is more costly to a team than missing a 20-yard field goal because of the cost in field position. We can do that with the help of Professor Romer. To be clear, this won't be perfect -- kickers in Denver and domed stadiums have an advantage, while kickers who play a bunch of games in particularly tough environments will be at a disadvantage. But this sure beats the heck out of every other method to rank kickers.

One last embarrassing note (in addition to me devoting three days to kicker research). I've excluded the 2008 season. That's because I performed this study originally in September, but it being kicker-related, never got around to writing it until the '08 season ended. If I was to wait until I incorporated the '08 data, there's a good chance I wouldn't finish until the '09 season ended. If you really need '08 kicker data, you'll sadly have to wait to the updated version of this post. Let's get to the analysis.

Jan Stenerud had arguably the two best seasons in kicker history. (And if you want to hear Kansas City Chiefs writer Jonathan Rand explain why he voted for Stenerud to make the HOF, go to the very end of this podcast.) Let's examine his 1969 season, which culminated in three field goals in a Super Bowl victory. Stenerud went 9/9 from inside of 20 yards; the NFL average from that distance was 90%, meaning the average kicker would have hit 8.1 field goals from inside of 20 yards. Therefore, Stenerud made 0.9 more FGs than average from that distance. Since every FG made under 20 yards in the "Early" era was worth 2.87 points, Stenerud gets +2.58 points of value for his work inside of 20 yards that season.

Stenerud was 4/6 from 20-29 yards, which was slightly below the league average. He hit 0.4 fewer field goals than we'd expect; field goals are also worth 2.87 at this distance and in this era, which gives him a score of -1.28 from this distance. From 30-39 yards, he made six of eight attempts when the average kicker would have converted 4.4/8; these field goals were worth 3.46 points in the Early era, so another +5.48 for the HOFer. He was even better from 40-49, where he connected on 6/9 attempts while the league average was just 29%; he made 3.4 more field goals than average from this distance, and these field goals were worth, on average, 4.09 points; +13.97 for Stenerud.

Finishing up, he was 2/3 from 50+; the average kicker would have made just 0.5 field goals out of three tries. These kicks are worth 4.49 points each, so +6.91 goes in his 50+ value column. He also made every extra point, giving him an extra 0.6 points up on the average kicker.

Add all those scores up and you get a rating of +28.3 for Stenerud. That's the highest rating for any kicker since 1960, although it's possible that Lou Groza (or another pre-1960 kicker) had a higher single-season rating. Finally, we make one more adjustment, to pro-rate for games played. I pro-rated each kicker's score as if he was playing a N game season, where N equals the average of 16 and the actual number of team games played. That gives him a score of 30.3, obviously the highest in the study. Stenerud '68 is the second highest score in the study. In 1968, he had a season better than any kicker has ever had in the last 50 or so years; then, somehow, he managed to top it in 1969.

Here are the top 50 seasons in kicker history. The raw column shows the kicker's score before pro-rating for the number of games on the schedule, but the group is listed by the "value" column which does pro-rate for the number of games.

Stenerud leads the way with five top-50 seasons, tied with fellow Chief Nick Lowery. Mark Moseley proves he wasn't a one-hit-wonder as he has two other top-50 performances in addition to his MVP season in 1982. (On a per game basis or if you performed a straight pro-rating of his 9-game season, it would rank as the 17th best since 1960; obviously it is lower than that using the formula above, which pro-rates his performance to a 12.5 game season.) Garo Yepremian shows he was a better kicker than passer with two top-50 seasons on the list; Morten Andersen, Gino Cappelletti, Jim Turner, Fred Cox, Bruce Gossett and Dean Biasucci join him with a pair of stellar seasons. If you don't remember, I've already discussed Cappelletti's 1964 season on this blog. And believe it or not, the great Gary Anderson has just one top-50 season, his not-exactly-perfect 1998 performance. And, for what it's worth, only 14 of the above 50 seasons came from kickers whose teams were in Denver or played in domed stadiums.

What about the worst seasons by any kicker? You already knew which season was going to come out on bottom:

Did you happen to catch that Mr. HOF is on the list? Stenerud was 43 and in his 19th season in 1985 -- he should have hung up his cleats a year earlier. In '84, he was the second best kicker in the NFL (although he was in a dome), behind the Eagles' Paul McFadden.

Finally, here's a big table showing the league average success ratio in each season since 1960, from the distances we've discussed:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 7:09 am and is filed under Best/Worst Ever.
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Various intriguing observations regarding the top 50 seasons:
- Mike Vanderjagt, who has the highest career FG% in history, only had one top 50 season.
- Neither of the two Denver kickers that made the list are named Jason Elam.
- Other than Andersen, the name most often mentioned for HOF is Adam Vinatieri. He did not make the top 50 once.

So I was thinking, Romer's numbers are based slantways on how likely a team is to make a field goal, yes? When you hit, say 70% of 42 yard field goals, that's going to have a serious impact on the value at 25 yards, and somewhat less on more distant yardages. Back in the 60's when you're hitting 25% instead, that's going to change the numbers. Add in the other factors like decreased turnovers, changed passing rules, different starting field position... his numbers may be wildly inaccurate for 1960's football. Thoughts?

One oddity I'll note: despite significant changes in almost every peripheral stat over the past 50 years, scoring has remained remarkably consistent over that time frame. There have been small peaks and valleys, but scoring has been more level than probably any other stat.

It looks like it's getting harder and harder to have a top season as the average kicking has improved. Only 3 of the top 50 are from the last decade (1999-2008), vs. 17 from the first decade (1960-1969). The worst seasons are more balanced: 11 in the first decade and 12 in the last (or 10 - see my last paragraph).

It's interesting how much overlap there is between the two lists. I count 9 people who appear on both. In addition to Stenerud, there's Neil Rackers, Ali Haji-Sheikh, Fred Steinfort, Tony Franklin, Mark Moseley, Gene Mingo, Gino Cappelletti, and Mike Mercer.

Several seasons appear twice on the bottom 50 list, once under "2 teams" and once under one of those teams: Martin Gramatica 2004, Richie Cunningham 1999, and Fred Steinfort 1983.

Looking a little more at the overlap, the bad seasons tend to come either at the beginning or the end of a player's career. 4 of the 9 players who are on both lists had their bottom 50 season within the first two years of their career: Moseley in his first season, Rackers in both of his first two seasons, and Haji-Sheikh and Franklin in their second season (oddly enough, both did this after having their top 50 season as a rookie). Moseley went on to have a long and illustrious career, and Rackers and Franklin have had solid careers, though Haji-Sheikh didn't do much. So it looks like some kickers can develop through rookie struggles.

The other 5 kickers who made both lists had their bad season in the last 2 years of their career: Stenerud, Steinfort, and Mingo in their last year, and Cappelletti and Mercer in their next to last. That's evidence either that top kickers tend to stick around too long, or that it's hard to get a job after having one of the worst kicking seasons in NFL history.

Still, if it's that various changes DO affect scoring but counterbalance overall, it may not be balancing out for every yardage. But heck, I can't even decide if it'd make the curves sharper or make the value more linear when going from goal-line to goal-line. Has # of possessions changed? That would alter the number of scoring chances, and therefore the likelihood of converting...

It seems to me that by considering the situational effects of field position following missed FGs, you are entering the realm of ranking kickers by performance/value (retrodictive) as opposed to solely ability/skill (predictive). Along these lines, I suppose the next step would be to consider the score and time remaining, e.g. a lead-changing FG in the final seconds would be worth more than a FG with a ten point lead in the first half.

I'm not so sure I would label this list the "greatest" using this methodology (perhaps "most valuable" is more appropriate), but it definitely is an interesting experiment.

I definitely get you on the retrodictive/predictive thing. One reason for the situational effects variable is so we can compare kickers to non-kickers, something that we may want to do one day. I think more valuable may be a better description than greatest, and I'm fine with that.

But really, the formula shouldn't seem to crazy -- the situation effects variable simply makes longer field goals more important. That was unintentional, of course, but it's essentially just putting extra weight on longer field goals than shorter ones.

Chase, did you consider at all a way to factor in a coach's faith in a kicker?

For instance, if you have an accurate kicker with a weak leg, you may not want to have him attempt many FG's from beyond 45 yards. Is the lost points gained from not making any long field goals enough to penalize a guy like this? Or should kickers get an additional penalty if their FG attempts in the longer ranges are significantly lower than league average? (Or should their be a bonus for kickers who are given more attempts than average?)

There was a neat stat in a post on the PFRA message board that Gary linked to before. He measured the average length of each kicker's made and missed field goals. In the next iteration of this series, I'd like to do that.